BREAD raised with what is known to bakers as a “sponge,” requires more time and a trifle more work than the simpler form for which I have just already given directions. But it keeps fresh longer, is softer and more nutritious, and a second-rate brand of flour thus treated produces a better loaf than when mixed up with yeast and water only. Sponge-making is, therefore, an important if not an essential accomplishment in a cook, be she novice or veteran.

Bread Sponge.

Put the potatoes into a large bowl or tray and mash them to powder with a potato beetle, or a wooden spoon. While still hot, mix in the sugar and butter, beating all to a lumpless cream.

Add a few spoonfuls at a time, the potato-water alternately with the flour by the handful, beating the batter smooth as you go on until all of the liquid and flour has gone in. Beat hard one minute before pouring in the yeast. In hot weather, it is well to stir into the yeast a bit of soda no larger than a grain of corn already wet up in a teaspoonful of boiling water.

Now whip up the batter with a wooden spoon for another minute, and the sponge is made.

Throw a cloth over the bowl and set by for five or six hours to rise. If you intend to bake in the forenoon, make the sponge at bedtime. If in the afternoon, early in the morning.

When the sponge is light sift a quart and a cup of flour into a bowl or tray with two teaspoonfuls of salt. Into a hollow, like a crater in the middle of the flour, empty your sponge-bowl, and work the flour down into it. Wash out the bowl with a little lukewarm water and add this to the dough. If it should prove too soft, work in, cautiously, a little more flour. If too stiff, warm water, a spoonful at a time until you can handle the paste easily. The danger is in getting it too stiff.

Now, knead and set for risings first and second, as you have already been instructed. This sponge will be found especially useful in making

Graham Bread.

Put the brown or Graham flour unsifted into the bread-bowl. Sift into it white flour, meal and salt, and stir up well while dry. Into the “crater” dug out in the middle, pour the sponge, warm water, the molasses, and soda dissolved in hot water. Knead as you would white bread, and set aside for the rising. It will not swell so fast as the white, so give yourself more time for making it.

When light, knead well and long; make into two loaves, then put into well-greased pans and leave for an hour, or until it becomes more than twice the original size of the dough.

Take care that it does not burn in baking. The molasses renders it liable to scorching. The oven must be steady, but not so hot as for white bread, nor will the Graham bread be done quite so soon as that made of bolted flour. Turn the pans once while baking, moving them as gently as possible. If rudely shaken or jarred, there will be heavy streaks in the loaves.

Graham bread is wholesome and sweet, and ought to be eaten frequently in every family, particularly by young people whose bones and teeth are in forming.

The phosphates which the process of “bolting” removes to a large extent from white flour, go directly to the manufacture of bone, and these also tend to nourish and strengthen the brain.

Tea-Rolls.

After mixing your bread in the morning either with sponge or with yeast, divide the kneaded dough into two portions. Mould one into a round ball, and set aside for a loaf as already directed. Make a hole in the middle of the other batch and pour into it a tablespoonful of butter, just melted, but not hot. Close the dough over it, dust your hands and kneading-board with flour and work in the shortening until the dough is elastic and ceases to be sticky. Put it into a floured bowl, cover with a cloth and set away out of draught and undue heat, for three hours. Knead it again, then, and wait upon its rising for another three hours. The dough should be as soft as can be handled.

When it is light for the second time flour your board, rubbing in the flour and blowing lightly away what does not adhere to the surface. Toss the lump dough upon it and knead thoroughly for five minutes. Flour a rolling-pin and roll the dough into a sheet not more than half an inch thick. Cut this into round cakes with a biscuit-cutter or a sharp-edged tumbler and fold, not quite in the middle, in the form of turnovers, pinching the corners of the fold pretty hard to hinder the flap of dough from flying up as the rising proceeds. Rub the bottom and sides of a baking-pan with sweet lard or butter. Do this with a bit of clean soft rag or tissue-paper, visiting every corner of the pan, but not leaving thick layers and streaks of grease after it. Arrange the rolls in regular rows in the pan about a quarter of an inch apart.

Cover with a cloth and set nearer the fire than you dared trust the dough, and let them rise for an hour. Peep under the cloth two or three times to see whether they rise evenly, and turn the pan around once that all may be equally exposed to the heat.

When the time is up and the rolls are puffy and promising, set them in a pretty quick oven and bake half an hour, turning the pan once in this time, and covering with clean—never printed—paper, should they brown too fast. Break the rolls apart from one another and eat warm. They are also good cold, and if the directions be followed implicitly, very good always.

Graham Rolls

Are made by treating the dough mixed for Graham bread as above and following the foregoing receipt in every section, but allowing more time for rising and baking. They are even better when cold than hot.

Breakfast Biscuit.

Sift the flour, salt and sugar into a bowl, hollow the heap in the centre and pour in the milk, working down the flour into the liquid with a spoon or your hands until it is thoroughly melted. Into a second hollow pour the yeast and knead thoroughly for fifteen minutes. Wrap bowl and biscuit in a thick cloth and set to rise where it will neither become chilled nor sour over night. (Study the temperature in different parts of the kitchen and kitchen closets to the end of finding the best places for raising dough and sponge.)

Do all this at bedtime. Early in the morning turn out the dough upon a floured board, work it for a minute into manageable shape; drill several finger-holes in it and fill them with the melted butter, the dissolved soda and the beaten yolk of egg. Pinch the dough hard to stop the mouths of these cavities, and knead for ten minutes, carefully at first, lest the liquids should be wasted, and more boldly when they are absorbed by the paste. Roll out into a sheet half an inch thick with a floured rolling-pin; cut into round cakes, set these closely together in a well-greased pan; prick each with a fork and let them rise near the fire for half an hour, covered with a light cloth.

Bake from twenty to twenty-five minutes in a quick oven, turning the pan around once, quickly and lightly. Break apart from one another and pile on a plate, throwing a clean doily or a small napkin over them. Break open at table. Hot rolls and muffins should never be cut.

One word with regard to getting up early in order to give dough a chance for the second rising. It is not a wholesome practice for any woman—least of all a young girl to be out of bed two hours before she eats her breakfast. Studying upon an empty stomach provokes dyspepsia and injures the eyes. Active exercise in like circumstances tempts debility and disease. Yet our bread and rolls must be looked after at the proper time. Have yourself called on biscuit mornings an hour earlier than usual. Rise, wash face and hands, rinse the mouth out and brush back the hair. Put on stockings and slippers, such underclothing as may be needed to prevent cold, a wrapper and the kitchen apron. Cover your hair entirely with a handkerchief or sweeping cap. Before beginning operations down-stairs eat a half-slice of dry bread or a biscuit. You will not relish it, but take it all the same to appease the empty, discontented stomach. Having made out your rolls and tucked them up snugly for the final rise, return to your chamber for a comfortable bath and toilet. When habited for the day in all except the outer gown, collar, etc., slip on the wrapper again and run down to put the biscuits in the oven. Unless it is too hot, they will get no harm while you finish dressing in ten minutes, just in season to turn the pan.

From the beginning of your apprenticeship in housewifery, learn how to “dovetail” your duties neatly into one another. A wise accommodation of parts and angles, and compactness in the adjustment of “must-be-dones” are better than mere personal strength in the accomplishment of such tasks as fall to women to perform. Master these, and do not let them master you. Weave the little duties in and under and among what seem to be the greater. While your bread is taking a three hours’ rise, you are free in body and mind for other things. The grand secret of keeping house well and without worry, lies in the art of packing and fitting different kinds of work and in picking up the minutes. Other things besides rising dough get on quite as well without your standing by to watch them.